As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
A computer system is one type of information handling system. Examples of computer systems include servers, personal computers, notebook and laptop computers, workstations and personal digital assistants. Typically, the computer system includes a processor, memory, a display, a keyboard, hard disk storage and one or more input/output (“I/O”) devices, such as a floppy drive or an optical drive. Examples of optical drives include compact disc (CD), CD-read only media (CD-ROM), CD-recordable (CD-R), CD-rewritable (CD-RW), digital versatile disc (DVD), DVD-ROM, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and combinations there of (e.g., CD-RW/DVD drive).
Generally, these optical drives read and may write information to/from compact disc (CD) or digital versatile disc (DVD) media. During read operations, the CD media is usually placed inside the drive such that a focused light or laser reflects off pits formed in a groove on the CD media as the CD revolves around a spindle in the drive. These reflected light beams are then translated into an electrical signal to form computer-readable information. Because the computer-readable information depends on the reflections from the pits and lands on the CD media, the drive must be able to track the groove on the media in order to read the media.
To track the groove, optical drives typically employ different tracking methods such as a differential push-pull (DPP) method, differential phase detection (DPD) or a three-beam tracking method. Of these methods, it is preferable for Recordable drives to use the DPP method for CD media. CD media can be produced in three ways. Media can be created using a stamper that physically puts pits in to a reflective layer or can be recorded by an optical drive that can change the color of the dye in the dye layer of recordable media. The third method is to change the phase of the amorphous crystalline layer of re-writable media. The DPP method does not perform well with CD media that has pit depths or grooves deeper than allowed by a CD media specification. As such the tracking signal from the DPP tracking method has a lower signal-to-noise ratio and a weak contrast that causes the drive to move off track. When the drive moves off-track, an error typically occurs that causes the read of the CD media to fail.